


Remote Control

by theparanoidandroid



Category: Little Nightmares (Video Game)
Genre: Cannibalism, Gen, Six's Hunger, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:09:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29761524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theparanoidandroid/pseuds/theparanoidandroid
Summary: Most times she lets him fall. Other times, she helps him up, only to change her mind and send him tumbling again with a shove.This time, Mono falls, only Six barely registers the look on his face as he plummets into the darkness, distracted by what gravity plucks from the pockets of his worn coat. The remote, launched into the air, clatters at her bare feet and as the signal tower comes crashing down around her, Six doesn’t think twice about putting it in her pocket and making to leave.The roar of destruction drowns out Mono’s terrible screams.
Relationships: Mono & Six (Little Nightmares), The Lady & The Thin Man (Little Nightmares), sorta
Comments: 8
Kudos: 117





	Remote Control

**Author's Note:**

> Had an inexplicable urge to write Six doing sick, twisted Six things, so I did just that!!

Most times she lets him fall. Other times, she helps him up, only to change her mind and send him tumbling again with a shove. 

This time, Mono falls, only Six barely registers the look on his face as he plummets into the darkness, distracted by what gravity plucks from the pockets of his worn coat. The remote, launched into the air, clatters at her bare feet and as the signal tower comes crashing down around her, Six doesn’t think twice about putting it in her pocket and making to leave.

The roar of destruction drowns out Mono’s terrible screams.

Despite her gripping paranoia, Six doesn’t leave the Pale City immediately. She’s tired and suddenly very hungry, hungrier than she’s ever been, and by early morning she’s squatting in a desolate two-bedroom apartment, lounging on a bug-eaten sofa near the ravaged carcasses of the previous tenants. The viscera gets stuck in her teeth, wedged in the crevices of her mouth, and she lazily probes at it with her tongue as she waits for the morning.

Sleep pounces easily in the warm, pleasant afterglow of a meal; it’s the first real one she’s eaten in a long time, and the first time she’s felt so complete. Stomach full, Six curls in on herself, huddling desperately in a vinyl raincoat that barely conducts heat. As she turns onto her side, something beeps.

She cracks her eyes open, suddenly alert, and stares into the black abyss: the television screen. The sensor glows bright red. The remote, which was, for all intents and purposes, forgotten to Six in her rush to find shelter, slips from her pocket and falls on the hardwood.

Against her better judgment, she presses the power button.

Mono’s face contorts in pain when he realizes who’s on the other side of the screen. His little hands part the static easily—he’s powerful, he’s so powerful and he doesn’t know it, can’t control it—and then his face appears between them, nose and mouth pressed against the barrier that separates him from Six.

Six can’t read lips, but the words _help me_ are simple enough. Carefully composing a look of indifference, she shuts off the television and falls asleep. She shouldn’t look at him like that; it will only tempt her more.

When it happens again, it’s months later, and an accident. Six is tough as nails and she deliberately drowns out the childlike terror that consumes her in moments of danger, allowing the emptiness she knows is there to flood her instead.

The janitor is clever and tenacious, but so is Six. His blindness is easily exploitable and so exploit it she does, leading him helplessly around the labyrinthine library with a breadcrumb trail of noises that he gobbles up as he grows steadily more desperate.

(He doesn’t forget Six when he loses track of her. He simply reconciles himself to the fact that he’ll catch her later. Good things come to those who wait. Waiting is how the janitor’s filled a roomful of cages with spying brats. It’s what he’s good at.)

It’s Six’s own fault for not thinking twice about what she’s doing before doing it, but by the time she realizes what she’s done, it’s too late. The TV’s on in a click of the remote and Mono’s there, clawing at the glass. Underneath the howl of static, he screams her name. He’s stronger. And he’s changing. His boyish face seems hollow. His eyes have lost their childlike sparkle. He’s becoming less and less Mono and more and more the Thin Man, but the boy within still shows his hand as his face creases with tears and he begs for her mercy.

He still doesn’t know, but Six does. This boy is a monster-to-be, the god of a city that’s both dormant and electric with life, entirely under his command. The viewers die just so he doesn’t have to know what it feels like. They like not having to think for themselves. They’re puppets, and the power lines that run beneath the cracked concrete are their strings. 

Mono makes them dance and doesn’t know it. Not yet. When he does, he’ll just make use of it. He’s taken Six’s peace, and now he’s doomed to take others’.

Six has no time for this. When the door grinds open and the janitor, growling and whining, ambles past, she’s practically halfway across the library, a lever in her wake, the image of a gaunt and sad, growing little boy burned into her mind.

The remote feels heavy in her pocket.

She’s so fucking hungry. Six can feel it unfolding inside of her, that dark, vicious hunger. It’s never been like this before. If it weren’t for the twin chefs stumbling and gasping at every corner, she would eat her way through the Maw’s entire meat locker in a heartbeat. When she stalks through the guest’s quarters and hears the meat cleaver hacking into flesh, she drools. When the firstborn chef begins prepping the meat for tonight’s dinner—god, so many dinner bells, how many days has it been—her stomach churns and growls and she scarcely has time to dive beneath a low table before the twin chef can get his fat fingers on her. 

Before long, Six’s hunger is literally impairing her ability to sneak, hide, and trick.

Before long, Mono, the Thin Man, unseen in his prison, has begun to expand his powers to affect anything with a signal.

Radios start going off whenever Six draws too near, attracting the attention of the twins, whose only area of expertise is the art of killing, and making the dead thing taste good. Mono’s voice grows hoarser with every encounter, and as she flees, Six can hear the emotion draining from it. He’s losing hope.

It hurts, but only for a moment, then replaced by bitter satisfaction. Mono’s faith in her was misplaced to begin with. If only he’d learn to resign himself to the emptiness, just as Six has, then maybe it would be easier. Maybe he wouldn’t have crushed her music box. Maybe he could end the paradox.

(Six could end it herself, if only she’d pull him to safety just once. She could, but she doesn’t.)

By the time she eats the Nome, Six is far enough gone that she feels not even the slightest surge of remorse for her actions, only disgust for how unsatisfied the feeding leaves her. It’s so easy to devour it now, to just feast—there’s only the Nome ground to dust in her teeth and the fluid give of stale blood trickling down her throat. No reluctance. No hesitation. No obligations to rules instilled in her long ago. Just the hunger, and the need to sate it somehow.

Somehow.

A little girl reigns over the Maw. There’s a new janitor. The twin chefs are so mindless that they can’t put the new employer’s face to that of the little girl’s they’d seen poking around in their kitchens so many times. The guests are all dead; new patrons are being sought after. The Nomes have seemingly disappeared entirely, but Six knows they’re there somewhere, watching her.

She kills the thing in the flooded olorp deck, made only annoyed by a previous attempted murder, and comes back smelling of rot and saltwater. Japanese cuisine becomes a frequent contender on the Maw’s menu for its lack of thoroughly cooked meat. The children that the previous janitor captured are not freed, but kept in their cages for business to continue as usual.

The signal pulls at Six until she finally leaves her chambers and goes to it. The television is just where she saw it last, in the room behind the library. It’s the only screen aboard the ship that still functions.

She taps the remote. When Mono’s—the Thin Man’s—hands press to the screen as always, she places her own there too, lets her dark magic meet his. 

They are equals now. The pursuers, instead of the pursued. Six breaks the remote.


End file.
